


You'll See Me Again (You Know This Will Never End)

by stella_bella



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Post 5X13, Reincarnation, TheDiamondDay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-13
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-24 10:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1602305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stella_bella/pseuds/stella_bella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After setting Arthur's body adrift on the Lake of Avalon, Merlin returns to Camelot, only to discover it's no longer really his home.  He sets out on a journey, all the while plagued by dreams of Arthur that seem real.</p>
<p>Title from "The Face Beneath the Waves" by AFI.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You'll See Me Again (You Know This Will Never End)

The sky opens up after three days of promising. Merlin presses himself closer to the ruined wall at his back and clutches his bag to his chest.

His horse whickers, flicking its ears in annoyance, and sidles closer. There is no fire, because Merlin didn’t have it in him to light one, and he had a terrible empty feeling it wouldn’t help even if he did. He’s been cold for three days, now, in his bones, under his skin where no fire can reach.

The raindrops thicken into sheets of silver, and the road darkens and then floods, reflecting the weeping sky. In his mind, it is a lake, and he is alone on a sandy shore. When he turns his head away and closes his eyes, the last part is still true.

Something wet and warm nudges his ear, and he turns to see his horse, dripping rain like streamers of marsh weed. He leans against its legs, taking comfort where he can find it. The wind picks up, blowing sideways, and the rain soaks coldly into his tunic. Shivering uncontrollably, he curls tighter and waits for the storm to pass.

\---

He dreams. Curled over and under his own tangled limbs, pillowed on stones and pine needles, he dreams of a silver lake and a lonely island, a sense of desperation. The fog rolls in, and he can no longer see, but he doesn’t remember what he was looking for anyways.

When he wakes, his eyes are bruised hollows. He skips breakfast in favour of an early start, and the horse eyes him sideways as he fiddles with the girth. He ignores the weight of uncertainty in its gaze, and turns them homeward, somewhere beyond the trees and out of sight, somewhere that he is no longer sure merits the name.

\---

He crosses through the northern forest and into a meadow around midday; the sky is a tender blue, and birds sing in the darkness of the trees he is leaving behind. The wheat is pale green tipped with yellow, rippling like waves against his passage.

Arthur is in the wheat, in the sky, in the dark rich earth still damp after the rain. His laugh is in the birdsong, and Merlin bows his shoulders, fighting the urge to turn around, to see Arthur standing where he knows he cannot be, alone and unarmed, at the edge of the field, watching him ride away.

\---

Three days of steady riding bring him to Camelot’s border, and at last the trees part like a curtain. He reigns in the horse, letting it shamble gratefully to a stop and drop its head to nose at the grass.

From above, Camelot looks bright and orderly, like a set for a play. The guards along the towers are black dots against the whiteness of the walls, and the banners fly red and gold, snapping in the breeze from the mountains.

Sunlight glows on the whitewashed stone, on the vibrant fields and the burnished clay and wood of the houses. Smoke rises from the kitchens and the forges, and the wheel keeps turning, as it always has, as it must.

Merlin shifts in the saddle, sore and exhausted after days of travel and little food. His back aches, and his heart is worse.

He twitches the reins and the horse obliges, tiredly, picking its way down the path, head drooping low. As he passes from the shade of the greening forest into the brilliance of the open fields, he cannot shake the feeling that he brings the darkness with him, pulled like a cloak around the weight of the loss he carries.

\---

The sunlight is much diminished inside the castle walls, and the chill seeps through Merlin’s threadbare tunic.

He stands, his body protesting the necessary display of decorum, and waits on Gwen. His queen, now; Camelot’s queen. She is standing, too, near the window where she can lean on the sill for support and not be noticed, at least not by any but one who has known her long and well, and there are not too many left that do.

Light streams over her, blinding, bringing out the deep red of her gown and the rich chestnut highlights in her dark hair. When she turns, her face is in shadow, the light a halo around it, and Merlin has to look away.

\---

He retreats to his old chambers in Gaius’s apothecary. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go, or anything else to do. The queen has closeted herself with her advisors, and stands poring over maps and scrolls, reports from the field of battle and lists of the dead, the wounded, and the lost.

Merlin had turned away, unable to stay and see the evidence laid out. He did not look to see if Arthur’s name was included.

Gaius is out, tending to the wounded, although he spares a bone-crushing hug and a sigh of relief when Merlin pokes his head around the corner. He doesn’t press, doesn’t ask, though he must know, by now. Everyone knows.

And they look at Merlin, sideways glances of shock, or sadness, or worry, but he isn’t bothered by those. It’s the accusatory stares that drive him back to his former room. He curls up on the threadbare blankets, smelling dusty wool and herbs.

When he closes his eyes, their eyes look back from the inside of his lids, asking why he didn’t save their king, their lord and protector. Asking why he didn’t stand in the way, why he didn’t offer his life instead. Asking why he still lives, when Arthur does not.

Merlin cannot answer, because he asks himself the same questions, over and over, until his mind is blank with exhaustion and the tears trembling on his lashes soak into the blankets like rain.

\---

He dreams.

Tangled in dusty blankets and his own travel-worn clothes, he dreams of things that he cannot allow himself to remember when he is awake.

Arthur, a crown on his head and a sword in his hand, on a hill above a ruined castle. His cape, red against the dull green of the day, and his hair like spun gold.

He turns, and speaks, but Merlin cannot hear over the howling of the wind, which blows stronger and colder and scours the hilltop between them. Merlin runs, but his feet are roots, grown into the earth, and he watches helplessly as the wind gathers up Arthur and carries him away.

\---

Gwen calls for him after two days. Her hair is bound, and she wears no jewels.

Merlin hovers in the doorway, and they stare at each other for a moment. There is much between them, said and unsaid and hinted at, and Merlin does not know where to start.

She asks him to tell her everything, and he cannot. He tries, but the words die unformed, and he swallows against a lump in his throat.

She dismisses him, too quickly to be stately, and he bursts through the first door he can find, leaning against the parapet and letting the wind tug at his clothes, swallow his cries, dry the tears on his cheeks.

\---

He dreams, and in his dreams Arthur wears a crown of summer flowers and a smile brighter than the sun.

The meadow is golden in the fading glow of afternoon, and the grass rustles with a gentle breeze. Merlin grins back, unable to resist, and Arthur reaches for him, pulls him down. He goes, and a cloud of small white butterflies rises where he falls, and Arthur laughs with abandon, his head thrown back and his throat bared, and Merlin wets his lips distractedly.

His crown is askew, the blooms already wilting, and Merlin reaches to set it right. Arthur catches his wrist, his ring cool despite the heat of his hand, and in the gathering twilight his eyes are dark.

He runs a thumb over Merlin’s hand, again and again and again. The metal of his ring warms to Merlin’s skin, to the heat growing between them, and he shivers when the breeze blows colder.

Arthur whispers his name, once, twice, and Merlin closes his eyes. When he opens them, night has fallen and he is alone.

The sky is black, without a moon, and the starlight shines on a pale circle of dying flowers, caught between his fingers. He drops it, and it falls without a sound, lost in the dark tangled grass at his feet. When he rubs a cold hand over his wrist, the skin there is still warm.

\---

Leon is the one to tell him about Gwaine. Percival has shut himself away, and one of the maids whispers that he doesn’t sleep, or eat, just prays into his folded hands. She doesn’t know which god or gods he has chosen, but they are not kind, and his broken pleas go unheard and uncomforted.

Merlin sits heavily on the steps and lets the world pass him by.

His friend is dead, his best and closest friend, and his heart does not have enough wholeness left to break.

\---

Merlin finds solace in his dreams, because in them he finds Arthur.

He dreams of Arthur, gilded in early morning light, tumbled in soft linen and velvet. Arthur rolls over, slowly, and reaches out for Merlin, who goes, sleep-warm and tousled.

Arthur presses kisses to Merlin’s lips, to his neck and the hollow of his collarbones; to his chest and his ribs and, carefully, tenderly, to the bruises that crown his hipbones. He whispers Merlin’s name into his skin, over and over again, and something else that Merlin strains to hear.

_Wait_.

Merlin gives up, tangles his fingers in Arthur’s hair, and closes his eyes, the sunlight warm on his lids. The room smells of linen and old stone and them.

When he opens them, the sun has moved to afternoon, and the room is in shadow, and Arthur is gone.

\---

Merlin leaves the castle for days at a time; disappears into the cool shade of the forest, and reappears worn and pale, haggard under the lingering traces of dirt.

Gaius watches, and worries, but keeps his silence. Merlin is grateful.

\---

Percival leaves, straight-backed and somber on his warhorse. He wears no armor, wrapped instead in a cloak of dull brown. Merlin watches from the tower, but he never looks back.

The same maid tells later that he has taken the mantle of monkhood, swathed himself in coarse undyed wool and ritual, that he passes his days in silence, on his knees, mouth moving endlessly in prayer.

She raises her eyebrows over a stack of laundered linens and says that few take the vows in memory of a fallen friend, or even a great lord. Her companion raises her own eyebrow, and they share a complicit look.

Merlin has heard that the monks have strange sterile ideas of sin, but they at least have the decency not to ask, and Percival clearly never tells, his love and loyalty bound to one who has passed beyond his reach and their judgment.

Merlin leans in a doorway, watching after her, chattering to one of the cook’s assistants, and yearns for somewhere to go where he could let his love fade away, breathe it up to heaven on the words of a prayer and be freed.

\---

He dreams, and in his dreams, Arthur wears a robe of sunlight and a soft smile. Merlin basks in the glow, in the warmth that steals from his heart to spread along his limbs.

Arthur shifts them onto their sides and gathers Merlin close, lets him slide a leg over Arthur’s side and intertwine their fingers. The grass pokes through the cloth, and an ant wanders across their joined hands, its feelers waving. The air smells of spring and the aftermath of intimacy, and Merlin inhales it like a drowning man, eyes closed against the warmth of Arthur’s skin under his cheek.

Arthur sleeps, chest rising and falling softly, as the sun strains higher in the sky and the shade retreats. Merlin fights the warmth, the drowsiness, the steady solid reassuring heartbeat in his ear that echoes his own. If he sleeps, then it will vanish.

He doesn’t sleep. It doesn’t matter.

He awakens anyway, to a cold room and grey skies after a rain. The damp air blows cold through the cracks in the shutter, and his blankets are thin and scratchy.

\---

On a midsummer day, when the sky is a vaulted ceiling of blue and the birds twitter in the greening trees, Merlin leaves Camelot for the last time.

He walks out through the gates, knapsack over his shoulder and battered boots leaving soft footprints in the damp earth.

The sun hurts his eyes, and he shades them with one hand as he turns to look at the white towers rising to heaven, at the banners red and gold and proud, at the people bustling back and forth, the chatter and shouts of joy and bargaining, the brilliant patchwork of cloth and fresh produce, the barrels of ale stacked along the tavern, the carts and horses and the glint of light on the helmets of the castle guard.

He looks until his heart is full, storing the memory for a day he knows suddenly and painfully will come, sometime ages and ages on, when the towers have fallen grey and broken, scattered stones across sallow fields, and the wind mourns softly through the blind windows; for a day when the people, lord and lady, queen and king, peasant and child, lie sleeping in the unmarked earth with no one to remember their names or that they even lived at all.

He turns, fingers sweaty on the leather straps, and his tears blur the path before him.

\---

On a bed of last year’s fallen pine needles, Merlin surrenders to sleep.

He dreams of Arthur, and sunlight; the scent of sweat and the taste of honey when their lips pull away, wet and sticky, Arthur’s hands warm on his skin. Merlin reaches for him, kissing the words from his lips, the whispered plea that he can never hear.

_Wait._

Dawn wakes him with cold blue light and a dew that leaves his clothes damp.

\---

His journey takes him on a tour of the country; rocky coasts in the west with an endless iron sea and crashing spray, rippling fields marked by tumbled low walls built by some forgotten people, deep tangled forests that hide the sky for miles.

Late one afternoon, he stops on a worn track, a brown ribbon passing through a heath of gorse and low bushes gone deep green and purple with twilight. He sits down, boots dusty and cracked, and picks up a stone, smooth with years and still warm from that afternoon’s sun.

This would have been a part of Albion, this stone, right here, in his hands, and those fields and the low walls and the beehive tombs left by the druids and the sheer exhilarating cliffs behind him and the soft marshes lit with eerie lights at night; all of this, under his feet, in his hands, extending on either side of him in an endless thrumming ripple, all of this would have been Albion, and Arthur’s, and his touch would have been in every rock, every branch, in the slant of sunlight over the hedges.

Merlin holds the rock until the darkness hides it, shrouds him in night and the soft whispers of life still in the world, and he stands and lets the light of the stars guide him on the path that winds and climbs and ends somewhere he cannot see.

\---

He dreams of Arthur, and when he wakes, his cheeks are damp. He rubs them with a coarse sleeve, and sets about making a fire, and breakfast. The porridge is lumpy and watery at the same time, and he’s glad for the meagre portion.

He’s rolling up his blanket when he notices the grass is flattened next to it, stalks crushed and fragrant.

\---

A storm rolls in as the day dies, and the flat white disk of the sun sinks into building clouds. Merlin stands on a rocky outcropping, letting the rising wind ruffle his hair and whip his clothes.

He waits until he feels the first gusts of rain spatter against his face, and then he retreats. Away from the edge, the roaring of the ocean drops, and the sky darkens swiftly, until he has to whisper a spell for enough light to find the shallow cave he’d passed earlier.

Lightning splits the sky. The rain comes down in sheets and turns the earth into a puddle, and Merlin presses closer to the rough stone behind him.

The drum of the rain drowns all thought, and thunder rumbles through the bones of the earth, shaking his makeshift shelter. Merlin huddles smaller, curled wet and miserable like an abandoned cat, and waits it out. Between the flashes, he wonders if the entire rest of his life will be like this.

\---

He dreams of Arthur, and in his dreams he is warm, and dry, and loved.

His legs shake, and his back bows desperately as he grasps to the twisted linens, panting face-first into the mattress. Arthur wraps his hands around Merlin’s and presses his face into Merlin’s shoulder, closer and closer, until he is buried, body and soul, until they are both lost.

Merlin’s eyelashes flutter, blue flaring into gold light, and Arthur tightens his grip and sets his teeth against the softness of Merlin’s throat, breath hissing as he struggles to hold onto what control is left.

Merlin closes his eyes, trembling on the edge of a knife, and then Arthur murmurs his name, brokenly, like the prayer of a drowning man, and Merlin is falling and falling and the water closes over his head, softly, warmth soaking through his limbs as he sinks to the bottom.

Arthur is a deadweight atop him, his lips parted against Merlin’s neck, little tremors running through him. When he releases Merlin’s fingers, they are white and stiff.

They drift for a while, entwined, and Merlin does not lift his head to look, like a superstition. Arthur’s hand rests on his back, fingers cupping his ribs as though he is fragile, breakable, both more and less than he is.

Arthur whispers into Merlin’s sweat-damp hair, words on the edge of hearing, and Merlin tries but cannot understand.

_Wait._

When Merlin he awakens, pillowed on his bag on a dry dirt floor, his skin is still warm. The rain has eased into a thick fog, and the dampness presses him down. He wraps his own arms around himself and waits for the dawn.

\---

The streams burbles quietly through a stand of trees, and the sun has burned off most of the fog. Merlin stops to rest his aching feet and to rinse out his clothes, filthy with travel.

He’s washing his face in a shallow pool off to the side of the main stream, when a breeze rustles by overhead, shifting the leaves and making their shadows dance. His scarf flutters damply on a nearby tree branch.

In the wavering reflection of the water, the sunlight strikes his face, and there is a bruise spreading at the base of his neck where it joins his shoulder; a dark red blotch that is jarring and familiar all at once.

Merlin traces it, pressing down to feel the soreness, and wonders.

\---

The village over the next rise is small, and the people worn. Their clothes are simple, coarse, and dull; a scatter of half-wilted poppies in a window box seem to pulse against all the brown and grey.

A gaggle of children run past, dirt on their hands and feet, and Merlin steps out of the way, smiling. He asks at the well, but no one has heard of Camelot or any of the other kingdoms to the south. The woman tucks a strand of hair under her kerchief, and smiles hesitantly.

She asks if he has traveled long, and Merlin frowns at the unfamiliar burring of her consonants, the lilt to her vowels.

He does not know how long he has been walking, and she tilts her head sympathetically and offers him water from her jar, which he drinks gladly. She tells him that he should get where he is going quickly; summer is ending and winter comes quickly this far north.

Merlin nods his thanks, and she touches the fabric of his scarf quickly, shyly. On impulse he ducks his head and slips it off, offers.

She startles, backing away with protestations and a fluttering of her hands, graceful despite the broken nails and calluses, finally giving in only after he insists. When she ties it on, the colour brings out the blush in her cheeks, the richness of her hair, and she is beautiful.

Her laughter still echoing in his ears, Merlin turns and follows the goat trail north, and in the sunset palette sees her face, her hesitant, radiant smile above a banner of red, and his feet drag less heavily.

\---

That night, the moon is molten silver and Merlin cannot sleep. He tosses and turns on his bed of grass, tucked against the worn mossy stones of a fallen wall, and is shaking and pale, defeated, when the first light touches the bruises around his eyes, the dampness at the corners.

He gets up and gathers his things, and sets out without breakfast, listening to the birds sing the coming day. The air is chilly, and there is a softness to the landscape, a mellowing of the colors, and the wind whispers autumn in his ears.

He stops at midday, exhaustion causing him to stumble over the ruts and protruding rocks on the narrow path, and settles under a low bush. Sleep is on him as soon as he closes his eyes.

\---

He dreams.

Arthur curls around him, fitting as though made for it, softening the sharp angles of Merlin’s body. His warmth soothes, and Merlin relaxes into it, lets his thoughts unwind and his breathing slow.

A hand traces his stomach, callused fingers catching on the ridge of his hipbone, the whorls of dark hair. He flattens his fingers, and Merlin breathes against them, his belly rising and falling. He drops his own hand, covers Arthur’s, and wets his lips to speak.

Arthur tightens his hand, and lifts his head to kiss behind Merlin’s ear. He whispers something that is lost in the drumbeat of Merlin’s heart, a sound like the sorrow of all the world.

_Wait_.

Merlin is afraid; afraid to ask, and to be answered, and he cannot speak against the rising tide of panic, so he lets his body speak instead, slides their hands lower, and lower, and when his breath catches, Arthur shivers against him. Presses closer. Pulls Merlin’s leg back, over his own, and Merlin’s free hand claws into the earth.

They move as one, slow and then fast, and faster, and the end comes too soon, as it always does. Sweat beads on Merlin’s shoulder, and Arthur licks it off, languorously, as though he has all the time in the world to lie here and dream.

Green glossy leaves rustle in the breeze, and a bird sings somewhere further on. Arthur resumes his lazy strokes, passing softly over ribs and belly, holding the swell of Merlin’s breath in the palm of his hand.

_Wait_.

\---

The first snows come early, and the days darken. Merlin stands on a rocky pinnacle, the coastline on either side vanishing into layers of grey; the waves crash below, and sometimes he can taste the salt spray. This is the farthest point north, the end of the world, and everything beyond spreads out before him, a heaving expanse of iron waves that pound endlessly, relentlessly, into the rocks.

Darkness comes swiftly, borne on the waves and the racing clouds, and the land around him fades, until Merlin is an island, a single flame in the middle of the night and the solitude.

He cries, then, for real, for the first time since that day by the lake. Sobs wrack his body, and he wraps numb arms around himself to try to hold in the pain, the brokenness, the lonely days and nights where it has always been winter.

A gust of wind steals his breath, freezes the air in his lungs, and then he is staggering back, throwing out his arms and calling, calling, screaming into the howling of the wind, begging; words in a language dead and forgotten, words that he has only ever used when all other lights have gone out.

They tear his throat, and he falls gasping to his knees, the rough rock biting through his worn trousers. The words tumble, whispered now, in a voice gone hoarse, and they fall to the depths below, lost in the roar of the sea and the wind; lost to a world that no longer understands them, here at the end.

His tears freeze on his cheeks.

\---

That night, he sleeps, huddled around a small fire, curled in the lee of a natural wall. The call of the seabirds rouses him at dawn, as it stretches grey fingers of light into the sullen embers of his fire.

He whispers a spell through cracked lips, and orange-yellow flames spring to life, warming his shaking fingers.

They change from blue to white before he realizes that he did not dream, not once.

\---

He follows a trail south, and though it is not marked, his feet know it, and he does not question how. Every night, he waits, heart pounding and chest aching in anticipation, succumbing to sleep only when exhaustion forces it, and every morning he is paler, quieter, more withdrawn.

\---

The meadow is changed, muffled under a blanket of snow. The world is black and white, and even the sunlight is colorless.

He stops halfway across, and holds a hand up to the light, showing itself for the first time in days against a sky so frozen it does not look blue.

His fingers glow, and he wonders if he will fade away, until nothing but his magic is left.

\---

Spring finds him in a hollow, tree roots black with melting snow, and pale flower buds pushing bravely through the earth.

He closes his eyes, to sleep, to dream, and the sun rises overhead, the sky blue after months of grey.

He does dream, like a dam has been opened somewhere, and all the cold pale lonely months of traveling dissolve. Arthur comes to him, again and again, with outstretched hands and a smile on his face as brilliant as the dawn after a rainstorm.

The dreams fade, and blend together, and in all of them Arthur is trying to tell him something, trying to speak with his hands, his lips, the way his body curls against Merlin’s, solid and steady. Merlin pulls him closer, tries to read the words in the soft pattern of hairs on Arthur’s chest, in the tears that fall from his eyes at the finish, in the way he trembles when Merlin kisses them away, in the way he fits them together.

Merlin waits for the morning, the real morning, and every time he shifts, lashes fluttering, Arthur is there to pull him back, and finally, finally, Merlin hears his whispers. _Wait_ , he is saying. _Wait for me_.

\---

He opens his eyes, blinks against the onslaught of colour and sound. It is high summer, grass heads gone to seed and the small flowers already bloomed and fallen. The trees rustle in the warm breeze, and Merlin tips his head, listens to the birds singing an unfamiliar song.

He shakes the stiffness from his muscles and climbs, slipping on the crumbly earth, to pull himself out of the hollow and resume his interrupted journey south, wandering through pools of green shade as the day leans towards a close and the light slants sideways.

His stomach growls, and he is contemplating finding a secluded glen to make a fire and scrounge some supper, when he steps out from behind a bush and onto a road.

It’s black, and hard, like stone but not quite, and painted in stripes. Merlin stands uncertainly, feeling the heat of it soak up through his boots, following the curve of it with his eyes as it cuts through the forest and out of sight.

He’s fairly certain he’s never seen anything like this.

He follows the road until it turns east, and then he crosses it and continues southward. Something is fluttering in his gut, an urgency that speeds his steps and shortens his breath. He walks through the night, hunger forgotten, and takes a small comfort in the stars that he glimpses between the trees, the same that looked down on him every night he slept in the castle.

\---

The next day he reaches the border to Camelot. He’s crossed several other roads like the first, some narrow and unmarked, others wider; one of the wider ones had a collection of signs, numbers and words that didn’t make sense, although their shapes tugged at his mind. He touched a hand to the edge, found it cold.

Several times he thought he heard noise in the distance, music or talking or even the rumble of machinery, but he never investigated. The feeling in his gut grew stronger, and he kept his eyes on the path at his feet.

\---

Dawn breaks over the mountains as he crests the last hill, and floods the valley with light. The castle should be there; the brilliant white keep crowned with sharp towers and fluttering banners; the people stirring in the streets and the marketplace; the sounds of animals and the smell of cooking fires.

Instead, the curtain rises on a ruin. Grey walls, tumbled; a single broken tower left above the roofless keep, and the empty windows like blind eyes.

Merlin falls to his knees.

An understanding scratches at the back of his thoughts, and he shies away from it instinctively. The air is warming, sunlight creeping across the valley floor, promising a gentle summer day, much like one when Merlin left, when he walked this very path into the hills, counting his footsteps to keep his mind off of a sudden terrible knowledge of what was coming. Of what has come.

He gathers himself and staggers down the hill. There is a wide flat expanse, like the roads he crossed earlier, and a small house with a sign. The words blur in front of his eyes, not that he could read them anyway, but he sees pen-and-ink drawings of the castle, his castle, Arthur’s castle, and colored dots marking what remains. It is not enough. It will never be enough.

Once he made time stop, once so long ago that he’s no longer sure when it was, and now he has somehow sped it up. The world has turned under his feet, and he does not know where he should go.

But he cannot stay here, so he takes one last long look before heading into the woods. East now, to the rising sun. East, to the lake on the shores of Avalon.

\---

Clouds have rolled in, chasing him, dark horses from the west that trample the sunlight. The pine trees crowd close, darkness at their centers, and Merlin breathes a sigh of relief when he steps beyond their shelter and into the clearing that borders the lake. There is a mist over the water, an echo of magic like the last wavering defence against the years and the change that Merlin can sense, the extent of which he does not know but would fear had he time to think of anything but this.

Damp soil remembers his footsteps as he picks his way down the shore to the edge of the water. He drops his pack without noticing, his fingers gone clammy and stiff, and watches the little ripples his boots make in the lake.

The mist wraps itself around him, clings to his skin and his clothes, and he would swear he hears whispering, now here, now there, as the place remembers him, as it finds his long-dormant magic and revives. He cannot see the island, not from here, but he can feel it, as though a line is drawn from his memory to the stone tower. This is the right place.

He waits. Outside of the silence, the world moves on; a highway passing nearby rumbles with noise, and several miles away, the nearest town glows with yellow streetlights on early against the gathering gloom. Merlin does not see or hear, not yet.

He waits.

The water ripples far out. He grips his trousers with shaking hands.

The ripple fades to stillness, and once again the lake is a mirror, reflecting only grey. Merlin swallows against the tears caught in his throat, and closes his eyes against the burning at the back.

There is a splash.

His eyes snap open. His heart leaps into his throat, dislodging the tears, and a shape struggles up from the depths, cloaked in mist and dripping streamers of water like marsh weed.

Merlin chokes on a cry.

The figure wades closer, every step an effort, and Merlin cannot breathe. It stops, several feet away, and a breeze, smelling of coming rain, parts the mist like a curtain.

The mud is wet, soaking through the knees of Merlin’s trousers as he falls, tears blurring his vision, and there is splashing and footsteps and then--

\--a hand on his shoulder, his neck, a hand coarsened with blade and bow but still so gentle, and a voice, confused, worried, calling out, calling, words that Merlin has only heard, dared to hear, in dreams, and he lifts his head, blinks--

\--and Arthur stares back, blue eyes wide against the pallor of his skin, and his mouth opens to say something, but what it is Merlin never finds out, because he fists his own hands in Arthur’s tunic and buries his face in Arthur’s neck.

Arthur grabs Merlin’s jacket, and his lips are cold on Merlin’s neck, his breathing choked with tears.

_You waited._

Merlin is shaking, and sobbing, and water from Arthur’s hair drips cold on his skin, but he only pulls him closer, holds him tighter, his king, his lord, his last and greatest destiny.

_Of course I waited._

Arthur pulls back, not far, just enough to press their lips together, damp with mist and salty with tears. His fingers find Merlin’s face, stroke the edges of his cheekbones, over and over, like a promise. Merlin laughs, a bit wildly, and Arthur’s answering grin brings the sun.

A light rain begins to fall, and the thickening mist swirls over the darkening lake. Night comes swiftly, and still they kneel, wrapped in each other, heedless of the world which turns, always, just beyond them.


End file.
